


The Maiden Voyage of the Urania

by 14CombatGeishas



Series: Misadventures of the SI-5's Best Agents [6]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Jacobi and Maxwell attempt to adult, Mission Fic, Poker, SI-5, Space Shenanigans, seriously something light in the coming darkness, takes place during canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-11 15:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11151375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14CombatGeishas/pseuds/14CombatGeishas
Summary: What happened in the 30 days between theUrania's leaving Earth and rendezvousing with theHephaestus.Plus: battle drones, poker tactics, Who Mourns for Adonis?, cooking for clueless idiots, the great speaker wars, a meeting between old friends, theUSS AMC Gremlin, and a bet for beer.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rachel (the-magnificent-sheep on Tumblr)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Rachel+%28the-magnificent-sheep+on+Tumblr%29).



> Takes place between October and November of 2015. Can be read without reading the rest of the series.

Five days ago, Kepler waltzed into the ballistics lab.  Jacobi hadn’t been expecting it.  It was just a normal day; he was sketching out a new missile on a tablet, figuring out flight patterns and trajectories in his head when the door opened.  Jacobi’s MP3 player was hooked up to the lab’s speakers, blasting Nine Inch Nails.  He was reliving his teen years and listening to a song that he remained pretty partial to.  

“You and me.  We’re in this together now.  None of them can stop us now.  We will make it through somehow,” he was singing with it under his breath, quiet enough that no one would hear him over the song itself.  Then Kepler turned off the radio.  Jacobi looked up in alarm.  If Kepler said anything before he did so, Jacobi hadn’t heard him.  He stood at attention, smile on his scarred face.  Whatever he needed Jacobi for, it was a big deal.  Kepler had come down to see Jacobi in person rather than summon him to his office.  But Jacobi’s alarm was somewhat soothed by the Colonel’s smile.

“Sir?” he asked.  There was something behind that smile.  A secret. That was nothing new, Colonel Warren Kepler was made of nothing but secrets, but Jacobi could often decode at least one of Kepler’s motives, at least, pertaining to himself.  

“On your feet, Mr. Jacobi, we’ve got something _very_ important to discuss.”  Kepler glanced over at Clark Jackson, the head of the ballistics R&D division of Goddard Futuristics’ Strategic Intelligence Division.  “Mind if I borrow him?” But of course this was just a formality.  Kepler could do whatever he wanted.  Everyone in this room was below him.  Almost everyone in the entirety of Goddard Futuristics was below Colonel Kepler besides the likes of Cutter himself.

No one questioned Kepler.  And when Jacobi was sent out on intelligence work, no one questioned him, either.  It was one of the best things about working for Goddard, the respect he commanded.  Daniel Jacobi was a credit to Goddard Futuristics, a favorite of Colonel Kepler, an agent of the SI-5. The best of the best and treated accordingly.  

“Of course not, Colonel,” said Richards.  

Jacobi followed Kepler out of the room.  “What’s up?” he asked, following a step behind his commanding officer. Kepler was a huge, imposing man.  In demeanor and accomplishments he was everything a military man should be, everything a _man_ should be.  He was what Jacobi’s father tried to imitate and what he failed to ever come close to matching.  

Kepler was tall with rod-straight posture.  His dirty blond hair was graying a little prematurely, already grayed at the temples.  He had a long red scar across his face; it was fairly new.  Jacobi had been on that mission, too.  He had piercing blue eyes that could express emotions from icy calm to fiery rage and could reach those inhuman extremes in less than a second of each other.  He had a strong square jaw and broad powerful shoulders.  His voice, like his expression, was kind until it wasn’t.  Until it flashed into something dark and frightening, quickly as lightning in a summer storm.  

“We’ve got an important mission coming up.  Very important.  Highly classified.  I get to pick my crew and I want you as my second in command.”

That compliment of being chosen from everyone at Goddard Futuristics to be Kepler’s second still sent a pleasant sting right to his heart, even after five years.  It wasn’t unexpected, he knew he would be, but it was always nice to have his importance reaffirmed.  But one word stuck out to him, “your ‘crew’?”

“Yes, we’re going back into space, Mr. Jacobi.  You, me, and Dr. Maxwell,” Kepler explained.

Jacobi grinned.  That was the perfect crew so far as he was concerned.

“We’re just going to pick up the good doctor and then I’ll give you both the rundown.”  

AI R&D was in the same building as ballistics’.  It was just a matter of going to another wing.  There was Maxwell in her lab, hunched over her computer, typing furiously.  “Maxwell,” Jacobi said as they entered the room.  

She looked up, smiled, then cocked her head as if to ask what they were doing here.  “What’s up?”

“Important mission, Doctor, important enough to pick you up in person,” Kepler said.  

Maxwell was clearly intrigued.  For a second she glanced from one face to the other.  Then she smiled and shut her laptop, put it in her bag, slung the backpack over one shoulder, and crossed to Kepler and Jacobi. Her supervisor, Dr. Lisa Zimmerman, wasn’t there, and Maxwell didn’t bother tracking her down to ask permission.  “Lead the way,” she said.  

The three chatted on the way to Kepler’s office, Maxwell and Jacobi attempting to wheedle information about this new top-secret mission out of their CO before they got their dossiers.  But he would not budge.  The most they got was, “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”  Which was promising to Jacobi’s ears.  There wasn’t anything he could think of that he wouldn’t believe from Kepler, especially considering they worked at Goddard Futuristics where the impossible was achieved constantly.  Something so outlandish he wouldn’t believe it?  Now _that_ was exciting!  After the mission dry spell he’d been in, an impossible mission sounded perfect.  

They entered Kepler’s large office and dropped into their usual seats.  Jacobi’s leg bounced in anticipation.  Maxwell leaned forward.  

“Mr. Jacobi, Dr. Maxwell, pack your bags – we’re headed for deep space.”

“That’s _all?_ ” Maxwell asked incredulously.  All three of them had been to space before, even deep space.  Jacobi entered Earth’s orbit something close to regularly when working on orbital ballistics tech.  He’d done a few clean-ups on deep-space missions gone wrong as well: the _Zeus,_ the _Gaia_ , and the _Oceanus_ all had a lot to launch into their respective stars to erase the existence of the crew onboard.  Maxwell had been on the opposite end of things, installing and updating AIs on various stations.  She’d been as far as six light years out.  

“Well, not quite,” Kepler grinned.  He slid them the dossiers.  They were enormous. And when Jacobi opened his, he was blown away by the sheer amount of redacted material in it.  This was a mission he was going to be on and it looked as if half the information was being kept from him.  He frowned, flipping back to the front page, the overview.  

They would be taking…and he double-checked to make sure he was reading this correctly…the _Urania…_ into deep space to rendezvous with the _Hephaestus,_ the furthest station Goddard Futuristics had.  

The _Urania_ !  Jacobi didn’t even realize the _Urania_ was ready to fly.  Everyone knew about it, it was the most advanced spacecraft on Earth.  Fast, smooth, comfortable; there was even an experimental gravity field prototype in the kitchen.  They would be taking the _Urania_ 7.5 light years to Wolf 359.  It was the furthest Jacobi had ever been and…he checked the duration and it felt as if he’d been punched in the gut.  His breath caught.  Beside him he heard Maxwell gasp.  The word “INDEFINITE” was written in all caps.  

“What…sir…what does it mean…indefinite?” Maxwell asked in a hushed voice.  

“Doctor, I believe you know what ‘indefinite’ means.”

“Sir…”

“It means we don’t yet know how long we’ll be up there.  Our supplies will last us well over a year, but…”

“But?” Maxwell prompted.

“But we may be longer.  Or shorter.  It’s not clear yet.”

“Why not?” Jacobi asked.

“Because the _Hephaestus_ has found _something_ .   _The_ something.  They may be on the brink of _it_.”

“What?” Jacobi asked with bated breath.  “What did they find out there?”  In the middle of nowhere.  

“ _Life,_ Mr. Jacobi. They may have found alien life out there.”

Jacobi’s mouth fell open in shock. He stared at Colonel Kepler in silence.

“Jesus Christ,” he heard Maxwell whisper.  “When?!  How?!”

Jacobi didn’t know how to answer at all.  He knew that the deepest space missions were looking for alien life, but he didn’t expect them to ever find it.  He thought privately that Goddard was probably really running psychological experiments on the morons they shot out there.  He wasn’t sure until this moment if he believed in aliens.  Maxwell did, but she didn’t think they were necessarily within eight light years of Earth.  She was a firm believer in alien existence, but she assumed they were maybe galaxies away.  They weren’t neighbors.  

Jacobi never really concerned himself with life beyond the stars.  Space had a lot of awesome and spectacular things in it – supernovas, for example, the largest explosions in the universe.  He never really needed it to have _people_.  But now, all at once, it did.  Little green men were waiting out there.  Vulcans might live the cosmic equivalent of next door.    

“They’ve been intercepting strange broadcasts for over a year now,” Kepler explained.  “Signals from Earth being sent _back_ by some unknown entities.  They’re on the brink of maybe finding out exactly who is doing it.”

“Holy shit,” Maxwell whispered.

“‘Holy shit’ indeed,” Kepler replied.  “That’s why we’re sending up someone competent.  Unfortunately or…fortunately for us since it gives us an opening…they’ve hit a snag.  One of their people is MIA and it sounds like they’re barely staying afloat.  The station is falling apart.  They’re sending out Pan-Pan messages.  Here, this one came in this morning.” Kepler pressed a button on his laptop and a woman’s voice came through his computer’s speakers.  

She sounded tired, broken almost, certainly defeated.  “Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan. All stations. This is an urgent distress call from the U.S.S. _Hephaestus_ Station. One hundred days ago we encountered an undocumented astrophysical phenomenon. The event left severe damage on multiple systems. One of our crew members is missing in action. Station operational status compromised. Requesting immediate assistance from any available craft. Please respond. I say again: requesting immediate assistance. Please respond.”

Kepler ended the recording.  “The _Hermes_ forwarded that to us just a few hours ago from Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski.”  

“‘Undocumented astrophysical phenomenon’?” Maxwell repeated.

“That’s where things get _really_ good!  Their star’s changed.”  He rubbed his own hands together. 

“Changed how?” Jacobi asked.

“It’s gone from red to blue.  And it’s potentially less astrophysical and more extraterrestrial,” Kepler grinned.  “Mr. Cutter feels it’s time we leant them a helping hand.  So he told me to assemble a crew of my best people to put this mission in capable hands.  We’ll go, make contact, and clean up afterward.” He said “clean up” in a manner heavy with meaning.  Kill or at least abandon the crew to die aboard the _Hephaestus_.  It happened sometimes.  Deep space was dangerous.  Not everyone comes home.

That wasn’t the phrase that caught Jacobi’s attention.  ‘Make contact’’ was.  Make _contact_.  He almost couldn’t believe this was real.

Jacobi had never seen Kepler quite this excited.  His CO lived for danger, even more of an adrenaline junkie than Jacobi himself, which was saying something.  But this was more intense, more palpable, than Kepler’s usual excitement.  

Jacobi thought he knew why.  Kepler was never satisfied.  Ever.  There was always something _better,_ something _more_ for him to achieve. Maybe this was it.  Maybe this was the better, the more, he was looking for.  The ultimate mission.  The great unknown.  The event that would change everything everyone ever knew.  The thing that would reshape the entire world in a single second. Alien contact.  

Jacobi glanced almost numbly at the dossier, his mind reeling.  One of the earliest pages listed information on the crew and had flash-drives containing their logs secured to it.  The AI was named Hera.  The Commander seemed to be one of those top-of-the-class military types.  But the other three names were interesting.  One was Alexander Hilbert, listed as an alias for Dimitri Volodin, someone Kepler knew and passionately loathed as a failure.  Another was Isabel Lovelace. There was a redacted blob beside her name.  It was in brackets, which usually meant the person was either dead or missing, but evidently she wasn’t any longer.  The last was Douglas Eiffel, listed as Communications Officer and Decima Subject, presently MIA.  What the Hell was a Decima Subject?  What were they putting him through out there?  And how exactly did he get himself so far from the station he was MIA?  

Strange mission.  Strange crew.  Strange orders.  Indefinitely.  

“Douglas Eiffel is the person we’re hoping to rendezvous with.”

“What?” Jacobi asked.  “He’s MIA.  MIA _in space_.”

“That seems like a pretty lost cause,” agreed Maxwell. “Why does he even matter?  We’re about to make contact!”

“If he’s smart he’ll head towards the _Hermes,_ and if he’s alive there’s a tiny, infinitesimally small chance we’ll find him and I’ll take that chance.  Lord knows what kind of craft he’s in, probably something they cobbled together out of spare parts. If it holds together long enough, we will find him.”

“Why?” Jacobi asked, repeating Maxwell's question.  Why were they wasting the time to find a man they would kill in the end? 

“He matters.  To a point.  For one, it’ll make them trust us, or at least make them trust us more than they would otherwise.  We’ll be returning their long lost friend to them, after all.  And two, he’s the lucky idiot who first intercepted the signals without even realizing what he’d found.  He recorded several of them on his logs.  The first transmission was _The Entertainer,_ a Scott Joplin ragtime two-step from 1902.”  Kepler searched through his computer for a second then played another audio file for them.

Jacobi knew the song, though he hadn’t associated it with any kind of dance.  It was a song he’d always just thought of as “old-timey,” something from the early 1900s that popped up from time to time.  The music played behind a man’s voice, “-Oh God. Oh sweet, merciful tap-dancing zombie chorus girls. It’s an old radio broadcast from Earth, a signal sent out... God, this must be decades old. All this time, it’s just been traveling through space, bouncing from star to star... I mean, just imagine... of all the odds, of all the space, it happens to run into us. You gotta wonder how many things this song has seen… Well, it looks like I didn’t stumble onto alien life today—”

Kepler ended the recording.  “But he probably did just that.  With luck, we find Douglas Eiffel.  If we don’t, we rendezvous with the _Hephaestus_ without him but with supplies they desperately need.   And we’ll make sure no one does anything stupid.  Mr. Jacobi, I believe your expertise will come in handy there.”

“Yes, sir,” Jacobi answered, understanding exactly what he meant.  Bombs.  Bombs that could end the lives of every single person on board.  Bombs that would keep the _Hephaestus_ crew in check unless they were completely insane.  That was a possibility out there, but if Kepler thought the incentive would work, it would work. 

They went over the mission for what felt like – and actually was – hours.  They went over every detail about the _Hephaestus_ , its crew, its mission, and everything else aboard.  There was an entire section on the previous mission.  

It was the longest briefing Jacobi ever sat through. Fitting, since this was the longest mission he would ever go on.  Indefinitely.  At least a year by the sound of it.  The longest mission before this had been a handful of months.  Usually they were only days or weeks unless he was stationed at one of Goddard’s more remote posts to help build a super weapon.  His mission to Sydney this past summer had been three months. He and Maxwell had been in Bulgaria a month nearly two years ago.

Indefinitely.  In space.  To make First Contact.  It was incomprehensible.  But if he was going to space – potentially for the rest of his life – there was no one he’d rather be with than Maxwell and Kepler.  There was no one else he needed in the universe to be happy.  They were practically, essentially, his family.  The only family he cared about.  They were the only two people he would miss and would miss him.

Besides the shock of being told they would be leaving Earth for the furthest reaches of explored space for an unknown amount of time, there wasn’t really much of a problem with leaving.  It wasn’t as if Maxwell or Jacobi had as much as a pet fish to leave behind.  They had nothing on Earth.  Nothing outside of Goddard.  They were SI-5 – their lives were Goddard Futuristics and nothing else.  The only things on Earth to really miss were explosions and gravity.  

He and Maxwell didn’t even have much to pack.  He’d been told to bring his bomb kit, which in his case was not something used to defuse bombs, but the bare essentials to build them.  They were both told to come armed in case of emergency – and it would really need to be an emergency: Jacobi knew as well as anyone that you really shouldn’t fire a gun in an oxygen-rich environment, you could start a fire.  Or else put a hole in a hull.  An explosive he knew how to compensate for, but there was no way to modify a gun to be less dangerous.  Besides, the recoil would throw you into a wall.  He packed a few t-shirts, a few pairs of pants – not many because in space he’d mostly be in the dark blue jumpsuit uniform he’d been shown this afternoon.  He packed his MP3 player, but no other electronics.  GF was providing tablets and the other tech.  

Jacobi packed the charger for his artificial arm.  He packed his toothbrush, floss, and other toiletries.  He packed up photo booth pictures of himself and Maxwell, pictures he would miss.  He packed posters –  one with a pop culture periodic table on it, one from _Apocalypse Now,_ one for  _Die Hard_ , one with a picture of a mushroom cloud – to decorate his walls.  He packed Blu Tack to secure them.  He packed his favorite books (mostly horror and thriller novels) and the few on his shelf he hadn’t read yet.  One such book was _Good Omens,_ which Maxwell had leant to him over a year ago and he never actually read.  He would get around to it now that he had plenty of time.  He packed a number of DVDs he and Maxwell and maybe even Colonel Kepler might want to watch indefinitely.  Mostly action flicks, some comedies, some sci-fi...sci-fi...that was funny to think about now.  He would be _living_ sci-fi. He packed up what existed of his life as best he could in the two small bags he was allowed.

He tossed out the little food there was in his fridge, ran the dishwasher one last time, emptied his laundry basket.  There wasn’t much else he needed.  He would leave behind his museum of military tech; it would be waiting for him when he came back.  It wouldn’t be forever.  It was just until contact.  Then they’d come home.  They would always come home.  Kepler would ensure it.  Kepler would always get them home.  

He would always keep them safe.  


	2. Day One

The _Urania_ was the best ship in Goddard Futuristics’ sizable fleet.  It was the fastest.  It was the safest.  It was the most technologically advanced.  And at that moment it was on the launchpad staring skyward, ready for its maiden voyage.  Inside, three people were strapped into their seats, prepping the ship for takeoff and listening to a woman – who sounded to be perpetually on her last nerve – countdown.  They were, of course, Colonel Warren Kepler, Dr. Alana Maxwell, and Mr. Daniel Jacobi.  

“T-minus 15 seconds.  Activating ground sound suppression systems,” said the woman, Rachel Young.  She, like Kepler, was a favorite of Mr. Cutter.  Cutter had introduced Jacobi to her about a year and a half ago.  She was extremely unpleasant and Jacobi hadn’t spoken to her again until earlier this morning when she went over the preflight checklist with the three of them.  She met them in the control building.  Through the huge tinted windows Jacobi could see the Urania strapped to the launch pad.  It wasn’t a large ship, but it would more than comfortably fit three people even with the over 500 days of supplies they were bringing.  It was sleek and strong and silver with immense jet-black engines, the prototype VX5 engines.  

“Good morning,” Young had said.  She looked at the three of them and then her tablet, flipping through a few screens.  She was a woman of average height, but was elevated by a pair of elegant heels.  She was extremely well dressed, fashionable.  She had an oval face, a small nose, and narrow eyes.  Her complexion was flawless and golden.  Her nails were painted blood red, striking against the black and whites of her clothing.  Her long hair was secured with a clip.  Her default expression was one of annoyance.

“Good morning, Miss Young,” said Kepler, politely but briskly, “you’re looking well.”

“Of course I am,” Young replied.  “You’ve done your ten hours of training in the _Urania_ simulation, yes?”

“Yes,” Kepler answered for the three of them.  

“Mission planner?”

“At start,” Kepler answered.

“Comms channel will be Alpha-Beta-six-six-niner-zero-two.”

Jacobi had only half listened.  It was mostly formality after all.  This was hardly his first space mission.

While she spoke, he had been thinking about his artificial arm.  Maxwell tweaked it so being in constant 0g wouldn’t have an adverse effect on it.  According to Maxwell, when the mission was done, his artificial arm would be in better shape than his organic one. She hadn’t needed to reassure him, Jacobi trusted it would work.  Maxwell would always come through.  He was more amazed that Maxwell had been able to put together _Rocobi_ 3.3 so quickly.  She did it in five days.  That was all the time they had before they were shot into space.  Shot into space _indefinitely_.  

His longest mission before this had been twenty days, including travel.  His arm hadn’t been rebuilt for that one, or the other deep space missions he’d been on since losing the organic one a year and a half ago.  They had been brief.  If something went wrong, Maxwell could always fix his arm when he got back and Jacobi could stand to work with just one for a few days.  He’d gotten pretty good at doing things one-handed when he needed to.  There had never been any reason to be concerned, his arm made it through every trip without a problem, but he also hadn’t been in space long enough for the wear and tear of space flight to really get to it.

Maxwell spent her last five days on Earth for a long, _long_ time updating Jacobi’s arm to ensure there would be no problems during indefinite flight.  Jacobi had tried to assure her the arm he had had always worked before, but Maxwell didn’t listen.  The prospect of going potentially _years_ with few new supplies was extremely imposing to say the least.  If his arm broke he would be down to one for at least 500 days.  Maxwell all but literally twisted his arm into letting her do it.  “It’s my last five days on Earth for God knows how long.  I’m doing what I want and _this_ is what I want.  You can’t stop me, Daniel Kenneth Jacobi.”  Of course he knew that; no one could stop Maxwell.

“Ouch, middle-named,” Jacobi said.  “If you’re sure, fine, knock yourself out.  I’m not complaining.”  

“For once,” she said with a smirk.

“For once,” he agreed.  “Do you need my arm or…”

“I’ve got the spare in my lab,” she assured him.  “You’ll need an arm, after all.”

Besides work, spending time in Maxwell’s lab and bringing her food, Jacobi spent his last five days setting off many of the bombs and RPGs he’d been working on at home, including a few antiques, things he’d been meaning to try out but just hadn’t gotten around to.  There were some truly excellent explosions.  It had been extremely cathartic and relaxing, plus it meant he left fewer armed weapons behind in his abandoned apartment.  That, in turn, meant he was more likely to come home to his building in one piece.

“Mr. Jacobi,” said Kepler expectantly, back on the launch pad.  

Jacobi checked the panel in front of him.  It was monitoring the nuclear engines that would propel them through deep space and get them into a sub-light arc.  The VX5.  The fastest engines on the planet.  Everything was as it should have been.  They, like the crew inside, were ready.  “VX engines nominal, sir.  Ready to engage.  Carrier rocket thrusters starting.”

“Dr. Maxwell,” Kepler prompted without looking up from the central panel in front of him.  

Behind Kepler and beside Jacobi, Maxwell continued to check the equations on her screen, calculating how long it would take the engines to reach a point they could cut into the necessary sub-light arc.  “We should be able to reach a sub-light arc in 100 minutes, sir.”

“And our course is set,” said Kepler, jabbing a few final buttons on the primary panel with unthinking ease.  “We’ll rendezvous with the _Hermes_ in 22 days.”

“2…1…ignition.”

Something below them rattled to life.  The carrier rockets that would get them out of the atmosphere roared, no longer a hum but a deafening bellow.  Jacobi watched Kepler lean forward and pull a heavy lever as casually as if it were a parking brake.  He’d flown similar ships before and had been to deep space more often than Jacobi and Maxwell combined.  If anyone knew what they were doing in deep space, it was Colonel Kepler.  Maxwell leaned back like someone getting ready for takeoff on a commercial flight.  If there had been a seatback in front of her, Maxwell would have pulled a magazine from it.  Jacobi, too, was calm.  Just another takeoff.  Jacobi spent a lot of time in orbit; he was very used to this part of the trip.  

The force of the acceleration from the huge engines thrust them back in their seats.  Layers of atmosphere peeled away, the sky disappeared, replaced by endless stars.  It was only a few moments before they were off planet, less than a minute before they exited the exosphere.  The first stage rockets fell away, their thrusters steering them back to the launch site.  The VX engines were ready to propel them hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth in less than a second.  

“Liftoff successful,” said Young over the comms.

“Say your goodbyes, kids, it’ll be a long time before we see Earth again,” Kepler reminded them, readjusting his seat.  

“Meh,” said Jacobi.  A nod from Kepler.  Jacobi in response activated the VX engines. Instantly, the ship was somewhere else.  The moon disappeared, Earth was gone, and they were just a blip in the nothingness of space.  They would be able to enter a sub-light arc before they reached Mars.

“Speak for yourself,” Maxwell sighed, “I’m missing like a million drone competitions.”

“Somehow I think you’ll survive,” said Jacobi.

“Wilson’s going to win and he’s not going to deserve it,” said Maxwell.  “Have I told you he _stole_ his latest design?”

“Ad nauseam.”

“Good, you’re going to hear it again!”  Maxwell said.  “He _stole_ his design from a competitor in Tokyo.  He didn’t think anyone would notice, but _I_ did!  And I reported his sorry ass.  But he says he altered it – he barely changed _anything_ but the judges say it’s enough!”

“I know, Maxwell,” said Jacobi.

“ _His_ designs are terrible!   _He_ thinks he’s blind-sided everyone with his stupid _Ben Hur_ drone but they just weren’t expecting anything so stupid!”

“I know, Maxwell.”

“You know what else?!  He had the _gall_ to tell me _Kill-A-Tron_ 2.0 was derivative!   _Derivative!  He_ told _me_ to be a little more original!   _He_ tried to lecture _me_ on designing drones!  I told the mansplaining bast—”

“As enlightening as this peek into your personal life is, Dr. Maxwell, you need to contact Canaveral and tell them we’re all set out here before we’re out of range,” Kepler said interrupting Maxwell’s rant.

“Yes, sir,” Maxwell said.

“Oh thank God,” Jacobi muttered jokingly.

Maxwell playfully hit him in the arm, “I listen to your ballistics stories,” she reminded him.  

“My ballistics stories are interesting,” Jacobi told her.

“Sure they are,” Maxwell answered sarcastically.  She opened the comms, she jabbed in a few coordinates, turned the knob to the proper channel.  “Canaveral.  Come in Canaveral, this is the USS _Urania_ .  I say again, this is the USS _Urania,_ come in Canaveral.”

“This is Canaveral, we read you loud and clear _Urania_ ,” Rachel Young’s voice again.  “How long until you reach your arc?”

“97 minutes,” Maxwell said, checking the timer.  

“Excellent we—“ Young stopped.  Then she began speaking again, her voice was a little quieter as if she’d turned her head away from her microphone.  “What, sir?  I’m trying to—give me a second to— _ugh!_ Fine!”  She turned back to the microphone, “ _Mr. Cutter_ wants to know how the Urania is handling.”

Jacobi was a little astonished by how Rachel Young talked to Mr. Cutter.  He would never imagine talking back to the head of communications, intelligence, and…other things.  Cutter seemed to be something more than human, certainly something more _terrifying_ than human.  He seemed like he could swallow you whole.  He could absolutely kill you without batting an eye, destroy you, obliterate you; but Rachel Young was unfazed by the horror that was Mr. Cutter.  Maybe it was because she was, or at least seemed to be, a personal favorite of his.  

“Like a dream, sir,” said Kepler, turning to face the comms panel.  

“Did you get that?” Maxwell asked Young.   

“We did,” Young said. A pause. “Mr. Cutter is glad to hear it.  He wishes you luck.”  

“Anything else?” Maxwell asked.  

“Don’t forget to record and send back your logs,” Young replied.  

“Wilco.  Over and out.”

“Good.  Over and out.”  

As soon as Maxwell cut the transmission, Jacobi turned to Kepler.  “Logs?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Jacobi, logs.”

“I thought those were just for the guinea pigs to make sure they weren’t doing anything too stupid,” Jacobi said.

“No, and Mr. Cutter will expect them from all of us.”

“Oh joy,” said Jacobi flatly.  

“They’ll want to make sure everything is going according to plan and none of us get cabin fever.  This’ll be the longest any of us have been up here,” Kepler pointed out.

“Unless something comes up,” Jacobi said.

“Don’t count on that,” Kepler answered. “We could be up here a few _years._ ”  

Jacobi’s last deep space mission had been a cleanup on the _Zeus_ , a station around Alpha Centauri.  There had been a lot to launch into Alpha Centauri A.  The trip had taken eighteen days total.  Maxwell’s last space mission had been to the _Demeter_ where she updated and expanded their AI.  That took six weeks.  Kepler had done this probably a dozen times.  He’d even been all the way out to the _Hephaestus_ before, a few years ago when things went wrong and he was needed for a cleanup.  

So here they were with an armory of some of the most imposing weaponry Jacobi had ever seen along with a handful of conventional weapons, some books, some DVDs, some electronics, and a crap-ton of supplies, more than Jacobi had seen on the actual stations he’d helped clear out.  “Indefinite” became more real by seeing the sheer amount of toothpaste they were bringing out here.  

Jacobi unbuckled himself and pushed off.  It was always hard getting used to 0g again.  Always.  No weight, but the same mass and inertia to compensate for.  Maxwell snickered when he pushed himself too far and nearly _clonk_ ed his head on the ceiling, had he not grabbed the handhold over his station.

“Having trouble getting your sea legs back, Jacobi?” Maxwell asked.  She unstrapped herself, too and grabbed the console to keep from immediately floating away.  

“It’s been a while,” Jacobi said slightly bitterly.  Being without gravity wasn’t quite like being underwater.  It was easy to lose orientation.  It was easy to send yourself flying across the room with the slightest touch.  Sometimes it was hard to push yourself off if you were just out of reach of a surface.  It was fun once you got the hang of it.  Very much so.  But you had to get the hang of it first.  The effect was even more intense when you were thousands – even millions – of miles from the nearest stellar object and were in _real_ 0g rather than just microgravity.  It was very different even from his brief orbital missions.

You spent your first few hours in flight trying to remember how exactly to properly push yourself around and swim through the air.  As much fun as doing somersaults through the air could be, etiquette dictated spending as little time as possible upside down since it threw off the perception of anyone watching you. Once you got used to it, you forgot what moving in gravity was like.  It would be interesting on the _Urania_ where the kitchen had the experimental gravity field.  It would certainly make the transition back to Earth easier, but there was no way it wouldn’t be jarring trying to go from 0g to Earth-like gravity three plus times a day.  

Maxwell had recently cut her hair from somewhere around her mid-back to shoulder-length and her curls floated around her head in a perfect halo.  She pushed off the panel, missed the foothold she was aiming for, and nearly hit the back wall.  “Dammit!”

Now it was Jacobi’s turn to laugh.  

“Oh, shut up!” The retort was harsh, but Maxwell was smiling.  She pushed off toward him again, grabbing her chair.  

“Having fun?” Kepler asked flatly.

“Just getting used to 0g, sir,” Jacobi said, trying to sound professional again.

“Don’t get too carried away yet,” Kepler said.  “I’m still going to need you two until we go into our arc.  Once we do that and the autopilot takes over, you two can do whatever you want.”

“Right,” Maxwell said.

“Yes, sir,” Jacobi said.  

They hovered near their panels until the sub-light jump was only a minute away, then they yanked themselves back into their seats and buckled in.  They made the final adjustments necessary to enter the arc.  

“Ready to make the jump,” Maxwell said.

“Engage,” Kepler said.

“Five, four, three, two, one…ignition.”

The universe blurred.  Everything became a smear of white, then jet black, darker than black, just...emptiness.  So dark they didn’t seem to move at all.   So dark and so intense it hurt your eyes to look at it.  Jacobi could not in all honesty call space a void, because he’d been in a sub-light arc.  This was nothingness.  Endless nothingness.  It was, frankly, unnerving.  It used to disturb something deep in Jacobi, twist his stomach into a knot.  Maybe because he knew they were nowhere, between things, out of the universe.  Maybe he was just afraid of the dark.  This train of thought immediately unearthed – again – the feeling that no matter who he tried to be deep down, his father had been right about him, he was a coward, he was something less than a man.

There was no way Colonel Kepler would be upset by something so simple as a sub-light arc, Jacobi thought.  So, at first, he pointedly ignored it, the feeling and the void, at least as best he could, hiding from the feelings churning in his guts. After so many days and so many missions, he eventually got used to it.  The void no longer brought up that anxiety like bile from deep inside him.  It was similar to how you stopped noticing the trees along the side of a highway, just a blur of green and brown.  He was privately proud of himself for that.  Pleased he was able to shake that weakness.  

This time, however, aboard the _Urania,_ something came over him, suddenly, heavily, and unexpectedly.  A strange feeling of dread hit him like a punch to the gut.  He tried to swallow it down, force it away.  But they were careening toward parts unknown for…well, as far as he knew, forever.  It _wouldn’t_ be forever, he told himself, it would be a few months, a year, maybe two.  It still wouldn’t be forever.  As impossible and existentially terrifying as this mission might be – first contact with alien life – it was just a mission.  

Once they were at the _Hephaestus_ he would go into mission mode.  He would be professional, every inch an SI-5 agent; but with Earth already millions of miles behind them and Wolf 359 even further ahead, there was time and room for doubt.  For anxiety.  He hated it.  This weakness in him.  There was no way Kepler would feel anything close to this fear, but maybe Maxwell did.  He glanced over at her.  She had released the panel and, extremely gently, pushed off, slowly drifting away from the controls.  Her face was stoic, her big brown eyes betrayed no dark emotion.  

“You good?” Jacobi asked.

“Yeah,” Maxwell answered.  “Yeah, I’m fine.  You?”

“Same,” he shrugged.  

“You sure?”  she asked, eyeing him.  

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he lied.  He didn’t want Colonel Kepler thinking he was having second thoughts.

Colonel Kepler unbuckled himself from his seat.  He caught a toehold before he drifted too far.  He moved with far more elegance and grace than Maxwell and Jacobi had managed, a reflection of more time in deep space and perhaps of something innate in Colonel Kepler that neither Jacobi nor Maxwell had.  A certain natural poise – like a predator.  

“Well, I think this calls for a celebratory drink,” Kepler said turning to face them carefully, so he didn’t throw himself too far and have to circle around again.  

“Are you breaking out the scotch?” Maxwell asked.  

Jacobi and Maxwell knew the importance of that scotch. They’d heard The Whiskey Speech enough times that they knew it by heart, word for word, every variation.  They had to resist the urge to laugh every time he broke it out for the new recruits.  Resist they did, remaining straight-faced and utterly impassive, but sometimes it was a struggle.  Especially whenever Kepler got to the “I like the feel of it in my hand” part.

Maybe the takeoff and maiden voyage of the _Urania_ was worth cracking open his meager stores of whiskey.  He hadn’t been allowed to bring much of it.  There was alcohol in the supplies they were bringing up to the _Hephaestus,_ wine and beer, nothing as expensive, as sophisticated, as goddamn _classy,_ as Kepler’s $300, thirty-year-old, single malt Balvenie Scotch. (Jacobi and Maxwell both knew the make, age, and price tag by heart).  Kepler had packed it in his personal effects.  One bottle.  Maybe two.  Would he risk cracking it open the first day?  

Jacobi had been on missions with Kepler that had called for scotch at the end, missions that either succeeded spectacularly or brought them so close to death that a drink was in order.  Of course, those missions were still successful, Colonel Warren Kepler never accepted failure.  He never failed: when it seemed like victory was impossible he found some other way to seize it.  Kepler gave some scotch to Jacobi after he lost his arm, the third or fourth day after he got the replacement, after he was taken off the heavy painkillers and antibiotics.  Kepler had snuck a glass into the hospital for him.  It was _always_ a special occasion when Kepler broke out the expensive scotch.  

“I think this calls for it,” Kepler responded.  “This is the _Urania_ ’s maiden voyage after all.”  

“I’ve never had it before,” Maxwell grinned.

“No?  Well, you’re in for a treat, isn’t that right, Mr. Jacobi?”

“That’s right, sir,” Jacobi answered.   _He_ liked whiskey very much, and he thought Kepler’s might even be worth the price tag.  Jacobi had never seen Maxwell drink it.  And he wasn’t sure she’d actually like it.  Well, time to see.  

“We should take it to the kitchen so we can drink it out of glasses like civilized human beings,” Kepler said.  “Give the gravitational field a test run.”  

The kitchen was separated from the hall by a small chamber.  One entered it, pulled a heavy lever, and, if everything worked the way it was supposed to, gravity would slowly return to the chamber allowing the crewmen to land safely before entering the kitchen.  It was all highly experimental – the first of its kind – the _Urania_ was the only ship in the known universe with even a single room of truly artificial gravity.  Jacobi wasn’t sure how it differed from those immense ships with spinning sections, the crew held to the inner hull with centrifugal force, but this was somehow less mechanical, more electronic.  While Kepler went to get the whiskey from his quarters, Jacobi and Maxwell yanked their way to the kitchen, pulling themselves along toe- and handholds, getting used to moving in 0g again, sometimes over-reaching, sometimes under-reaching, sometimes accidentally setting themselves in a spin by turning themselves a little too forcefully or banging their heads on the ceiling.  They laughed at each other and themselves for every mistake they made.  

Jacobi punched in the code to the outer chamber and it hissed opened.  

“I still don’t understand why the kitchen needs to be locked, gravity or no,” Maxwell said pulling her way into the chamber.  

Jacobi shrugged.  “Protocol.  Are you ready?”

“You’re excited about this,” Maxwell said.

“Yeah, I am.  I don’t usually get to see the super-top-secret experimental spaceship things.”

“You’re always out on the crappiest stations,” Maxwell said.  She didn’t have that problem.  She was usually in the newest and best stations, installing their AIs.  Jacobi’s job out in deep space was usually getting rid of evidence.  

“They’re the ones that need to be cleared out,” Jacobi reminded her.  “Now we’re both going to one of the crappiest.  Ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” Maxwell answered, gripping one of the handholds.

“3, 2, 1…” He pulled the lever.  The reaction was immediate.  Slowly he felt himself tugged downward.  He felt heavy, his stomach dropped like it would as a roller coaster began its descent. Two pairs of feet thudded heavily onto the metal floor, flat, unlike how it was on the rest of the ship, specifically for this purpose.  Maxwell and he both staggered a little, grabbing hold of one another to stay on their feet as the gravity balanced out.  They looked at each other and laughed.

“Well, it works,” Jacobi said, standing upright.  He opened the heavy door leading into the kitchen.  

They entered the kitchen.  Jacobi checked the fridge.  Fully stocked.  It would be much easier to cook with gravity, not that either he or Maxwell would really be doing _that._ It would be much easier to reheat things, put Pop Tarts in the toaster, and boil water with gravity.

“I’ve never had scotch before,” Maxwell admitted.  “What’s it like?”

“Uh…smooth.  Smokey.  Expensive.”

“It _tastes_ expensive?” Maxwell asked.

“Kepler’s does.  You’ll see.”

Kepler joined them fairly quickly, carrying a bottle of scotch.  He put it on the table and pulled three whiskey glasses from the cabinet over the fridge.  He opened the bottle and, with a dramatic flourish, filled the glasses.  He passed them out, first to Jacobi, then to Maxwell, then picked up the last for himself.  

“To the maiden voyage of the  _Urania_ , the SI-5, and the success of the mission,” Kepler said.  

Maxwell and Jacobi echoed the sentiment.  The three clinked their glasses together and took their first sip.  


	3. Log UR001-ASM-001

[Transcript of the log of Alana S. Maxwell, AI R&D, SI-5]

 

[Begin Recording]

This is the daily log of Dr. Alana Maxwell aboard the USS _Urania_ .  Day 1.  Space is still…well, it’s still space.  I’ve been up here four times before.  It doesn’t _suck,_ but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  But I’m here, so…

[A sigh]

It’s not _so_ bad.  At least I’m up here with Jacobi this time.  But this is going to be a lot longer than like, what was my record before?  Six weeks?  Eight?  Yeah, when we kept having trouble installing Iris on the _Athena.  That_ was a nightmare.  

And this...this is much longer than that.  [More quietly] So much longer. [Back to normal volume] I wish we had some kind of timeline, but I understand that that’s impossible.  We don’t know what the aliens – Jesus Christ, there are _aliens_ , there are _really_ aliens and we are going to make contact with them – we don’t know what they’re _doing_ , what they’re _planning_.  This is...this is going to be fascinating!  [Quickly] Maybe a little terrifying, but also fascinating!  I’m still having trouble just comprehending it!  

[A laugh]

Jesus...first contact...

[A long  pause]

[Dr. Maxwell clears her throat]

I’m excited to meet Hera, too.  But whoever is listening to this probably already guessed that.  I don’t know much about them yet…I don’t even know what pronouns they use.  I haven’t started the logs yet.  I’ll learn more from them, I’m sure.  But before leaving, no one would tell me anything besides their unit number and designation.  

Hera must be _quite_ the AI to end up stationed all the way out here.  I wonder what they did wrong.   _And_ I wonder why no one back on the ground would _tell me_ before I left.  It’s not like I didn’t try to get it out of you.  It must have been really something if everyone’s _this_ secretive.  I will find out, sooner or later.  You know I will.  

I feel bad for Hera, all the way out here with only a bunch of computer-illiterate humans for company.  None of the human crew seems to have any background in even simple computers.  Hera has been on their own for more than three years now.  But I’ll be there soon.  We can talk shop.  It’ll be a relief for me, too.  I love Jacobi to death, he’s my best friend, but you start talking advanced computation and his eyes just glaze over and you know you’ve lost him.  He’ll [an imitation of Daniel Jacobi], “uh-huh” and [another imitation of Daniel Jacobi], “sure, yeah,” but I _know_ he has no idea what I’m talking about.

I’ll listen to the _Hephaestus_ logs we were given.  I know I should’ve done it already but I started them before we left and for the most part they’re _really_ boring.  Well, Minkowski’s are boring, Hilbert’s are arrogant, and Eiffel’s are quite possibly the stupidest things I have ever listened to in my entire life.  

[A pause]

The _Urania_ is great.  The VX5 engines aren’t just fast, they’re quiet and smooth.  We made the jump to our arc really quickly.  But you know that.  I’m still trying to get used to the kitchen.  It’s bizarre going from 0g to Earth’s gravity in just a couple of seconds.  I guess eventually I’ll get used to it.  According to Colonel Kepler it makes cooking easier.  But you know _that_ , too.  

The worst part is going to be getting used to sleeping strapped in again.  I hate that.  Jacobi can sleep anywhere, but I need my blankets.  A sleeping bag strapped to a cot just isn’t the same.  Actually, the sleeping bag and cot look comfier than the ones I had on my last few missions.  It seems like you guys really went all-out on the _Urania_.  Jacobi’s pretty impressed by the engines too, but neither of us are really nuclear physicists.

I don’t have anything else to report yet.  I’ll tell you if Jacobi or the Colonel do something really ridiculous.  Tonight we’re going to binge some _Star Trek_ TOS.  I’m glad Jacobi was smart enough to bring some DVDs.  I would have, but I don’t really _have_ any.  I use the internet like a normal person, but Jacobi likes his special features.  Thank God for that.  Who knew it would come in handy?

[A laugh]

I have some decorating to do.  I printed off a bunch of memes before we left to tape to things and drive Colonel Kepler a little insane.  

Well, we’ve only been up here a few hours, so I don’t have anything else to report.  I’ll sign off here.

Oh, one final note: scotch is _disgusting_.

 

[End of Recording]


	4. Day 5

 It was Jacobi’s idea. So later on, when he was losing, he really had no right to complain, at least in Maxwell’s opinion.  

He managed to find a deck of cards among the supplies, then tracked Maxwell down. She was in her quarters using her off-shift to play _Grand Theft Auto_ on a GF laptop.  Between Jacobi and Maxwell, they’d split responsibility for entertainment: Jacobi brought the DVDs, Maxwell the video games.  She promised none of them were hacked and had actually followed through on that promise.  Maxwell was extremely good at video games, regardless of platform.  But whenever she wasn’t, she would hack into it to fix that.  

He knocked on her door and Maxwell, already assuming it was Jacobi – since Kepler wouldn’t leave his post during his shift and very rarely visited his subordinates’ quarters – beckoned him in.  “It’s unlocked!”

The door hissed open and Jacobi yanked himself to her side using the handhold secured beside the door.  “Poker?” he asked, smoothly coming to a stop between her and the screen, blocking her view. In one hand he brandished the deck of cards and in the other he held a plastic bag of hawthorn rolls.  They were a sticky, curled candy made from Chinese hawthorn, which Jacobi had gotten a taste for during their mission in China earlier that year.  

Maxwell tried to lean around her friend, but it was too late.  Her car crashed spectacularly and police swiftly surrounded Niko.  “Dammit Jacobi!”

“Now that you’re free,” he grinned at her, “do you want to play poker?”

She glared at him.  His smile didn’t even flicker.

“Fine,” she grumbled.  “But I’m going to kick your sorry ass.”

“We’ll see,” he smirked.

“I usually win,” Maxwell reminded him.

“Usually isn’t always.”  

“But it _is_ close.  Can I have a hawthorn roll?” she asked, holding out her hand expectantly.

“Hmmm….” Jacobi pretended to consider it.  “Nah.”

She grabbed for the bag, but he held it over his head, high above hers.  Back on Earth, the fact he was 10 inches taller than she meant Jacobi could easily put things out of her reach.  He took full advantage of that fact.  Often.  It was infuriating.  At this point the prank was probably more reflex than anything else, since he seemed to have forgotten a crucial detail.  They were no longer on Earth.  

Maxwell launched herself off the ground, grabbed the bag, pushed off the ceiling, front-flipped gracefully over Jacobi’s head, and caught herself on the far wall.  She removed a hawthorn roll from the bag, left the bag to float beside her, and smirked as she unwrapped her prize.  “We’re in 0g, Jacobi, nothing is out of my reach.”

“Cheater,” he said.  Probably because she usually said something similar when he used his superior height against her.   

Maxwell popped one end of the sticky roll into her mouth so it looked like a long, dark red tongue stuck out at Jacobi.  He launched himself toward the candy, too, but Maxwell snatched the bag from the air just before Jacobi’s fingers closed around the packaging.  She slurped the roll into her mouth as she played hawthorn roll keep-away.  

“You know I ordered those special,” Jacobi complained.  

“That doesn’t mean you can’t share,” Maxwell said, pushing the bag over her head.  “Are we playing poker or bitching about candy?”

“Both.”  He managed to grab the bag as Maxwell tried to slowly juggle it to her other hand.  Before losing the bag, Maxwell grabbed and pocketed a handful of the candy.  “Fine, keep them,” Jacobi sighed.  “You know, we should get the Colonel in on the game, too.”

“The poker game, you mean,” Maxwell clarified since there was no way Kepler would engage in or care about a fight over candy.  

“Yeah, obviously not _this_ ,” he unwrapped a hawthorn roll as he spoke, popping it into his mouth.  

“The only three people ever to get kicked out of the SI’s poker night,” Maxwell pointed out.

“Should make for an interesting game,” Jacobi said.

“To say the least.”

Life in the Strategic Intelligence Division was stressful at best, short and bloody at worst.  Everyone knew it.  And that fact and the anxiety it brought, could get you wound up.  It could get you down.  It could crush you.  There were many ways agents relaxed between field missions and life-threatening projects.  One of them was a poker night in which all sections (1 through 5) were welcome to decompress and play a few games. They were decently popular, in part because the likes of Jacobi and Maxwell, cheaters to the core, were not allowed in.

“Maybe we’ll see why Colonel Kepler got kicked out,” Jacobi said.

Maxwell’s eyes lit up and she grinned.  “I hope so.”  She had long been curious about what Colonel Kepler had done.

She knew what Jacobi did.  He had been banned about a year before Maxwell started at Goddard.  It was discovered he kept winning because he snuck in cards up the sleeves of his sweatshirt.  He excelled at slipping them into his hand, but even the best made mistakes and one day he was found out. With much drama and complaining from the accused, Daniel Jacobi was officially barred.

Maxwell lasted a few months before the fact that she never lost raised suspicion.  She was extremely good at cheating, better than Jacobi, she could cull with the best of them, but she wasn’t allowed to deal.  So, instead, she developed an undetectable method of marking cards, using the pattern of the card back to her advantage.  The dealer, always the same SI-1 agent, was also an AI developer and was easily swayed out of awe for Maxwell.  The rest of the players never truly proved she was cheating – she _was_ , but they never successfully uncovered it.  They banned her anyway.  She was a little bitter that she lost her place at the table for _suspicion._

Then there was Colonel Kepler.  Neither she nor Jacobi knew what got him thrown out.  It happened even before Jacobi joined up five years ago.  Maxwell was extremely curious to see exactly what Kepler had up his sleeve, perhaps literally.  It had to be something particularly spectacular, in part because Warren Kepler never did anything short of spectacular, and in part because of the way the few agents who had been around long enough to play with him talked about their games.

 

***

 

Jacobi and Maxwell found Kepler, unsurprisingly, on the bridge.  He was monitoring the autopilot, checking their course, and running the systems through their diagnostics mode as he did every day.  Nothing was wrong.  Nothing was ever wrong, but he followed protocol.  

There wasn’t to do on the _Urania._ It was in perfect condition, the autopilot was navigating them through their arc and would continue to do so for the next twenty-one days.  Their part of the navigation was done, the end of the arc was set, there wasn’t much for anyone on the bridge beside ensure everything was going smoothly, and that was necessary only every so often.  Indeed, Kepler did it more than was required, probably just because he needed _something_ to do to keep from getting dangerously bored. 

They spent their working rotations on guard, mostly. Every day Kepler would run them through exercises: what to do if they couldn’t exit the arc, what to do if there was a fire, what to do if the hull was breached.  They learned how to take control from the autopilot in or out of the arc. They ran through medical drills in case they actually found Douglas Eiffel (Kepler seemed to believe they would, which Maxwell knew meant that Jacobi believed they would, even though she believed [as she had told Jacobi] they were as likely to find Frodo Baggins as they were the missing comms officer) or if someone was injured or ill on the job.  

With a crew of three it was essential they were all constantly and consistently on point.  They always were.  Maxwell might as well have been a medical doctor for all the training she had now.  Despite having never flown a plane, both Jacobi and Maxwell could easily fly the most advanced spacecraft humans had ever built.  They knew how to disengage – and even destroy – the autopilot.  They were among the elite few who could navigate in a sub-light arc.  

The most difficult drills were the ones where Kepler decided to test them physically. Like when they sparred, an exercise that Colonel Kepler would _never_ lose.  He had trained them this way on Earth: just as roughly, just as dangerously, just as likely to dislocate your shoulder.  Up here they trained with weapons, too.  Maxwell knew if these at been conventional weapons Jacobi wouldn’t have needed it.  But these were far from conventional.  They were unlike anything anyone had ever seen.  

Today was a slow day so far, quiet; Kepler hadn’t demanded anything of them, yet.  And they still had a few hours before their training ritual.

“Good morning, Colonel,” Maxwell said. Morning, of course, was relative. According to the clocks on the ship it was 0800, but there wasn’t actually morning out here in the nothingness. Jacobi and Maxwell had been on call – though not active – for two hours already.  God knew how long Kepler had been on the bridge. The man never seemed to sleep.

He glanced up, “Dr. Maxwell, Mr. Jacobi, what can I do for you?”

“Up for a game of poker?” Jacobi asked.   

Kepler’s expression changed, he grinned almost dangerously.  “Are you sure you two are ready for that?”  

Maxwell shuffled the deck deftly between her hands, compensating for the lack of gravity, “I think we’re ready.  The real question is: are you ready for _me_?”

Kepler laughed uproariously, “I like your spirit, Maxwell.  I’m going to _break it_ , but I like it.”  

“Big talk, old man,” Maxwell smirked.  Kepler was not an old man, the gray in his hair was premature, but he was over a decade older than Maxwell and if she was the most junior member of this crew, she would use that.  “Put your chips where your mouth is.”

They opted to play on the bridge, hovering in a circle.  That way Kepler could keep an ear to the diagnostics report if anything came up.  Jacobi went and found poker chips near where the cards had been hidden amongst the supplies.  They were split evenly between the three of them.  Maxwell dealt first.  She gave the deck another shuffle.  “Five cards, jokers wild, agreed?”

“Agreed,” Kepler answered, “Jacobi?”

“Sounds fine,” he said.  

“One rule,” said Kepler, “no cheating.  Don’t think I won’t know.”

Maxwell snorted, “You got kicked out of SI’s poker night, too.  They still talk about it.  You must have done _something_ to get that reputation.”

Kepler smiled that dangerous smile, “I didn’t cheat.  Unlike _some_ people, I don’t need to.”

“I don’t _need_ to cheat!” Maxwell assured him.  

“Prove it,” Kepler smirked arrogantly.

“Fine!” she said, “I will!”  She would wipe that stupid grin off his face.   

Jacobi raised his eyebrows and let out a low whistle.  

“Oh shut up!” Maxwell said, “Like you’re above cheating.”

“Did I say I was?” Jacobi asked.  “I’m just surprised we’ve got a clean game.”

Maxwell could twist any kind of game in her favor.  It was very easy to cheat in Texas Hold ‘Em, where you could make predictions based on what cards showed.  Maxwell had developed her own poker-friendly version of counting cards. It was far less reliable than just marking the deck, but it could help.  She was such a practiced card shark that it was hard to resist the urge, but she decided she would do it.  She had to prove to Kepler that she was as good as he was whether she cheated or not.  

In all honesty, she saw no problem in cheating as long as you were smart about it.  When Jacobi and she played, well, just about anything, they both cheated.  It always came down to who cheated better.  

“One chip to start,” Maxwell said, anteing up.  

“I didn’t expect you to be so…timid,” Kepler smirked, but he tossed his chip into the center where it floated near Maxwell’s, slightly above it.  Jacobi flicked his in like a coin.  It clicked off Maxwell’s and they both bounced in opposite directions, floating gently away from one another.   

Maxwell dealt the cards and looked at her hand.  A joker, the ten of clubs, three of clubs, two of hearts, and the nine of clubs.  A fairly lucky hand already.  She looked up at Kepler.  His cold blue eyes betrayed nothing as he analyzed his cards.  It was as if a door had shut behind them.  She searched for some microexpression, some twitch, but none ever came.  

Maxwell learned tells.  She knew Jacobi’s.  Whenever he had a bad hand, his eyebrows would descend for a half moment. His mouth twitched with a good hand like he was fighting a smug smirk.  They were minute movements, but Maxwell knew to look for them.  

She looked up at Jacobi.  Nothing.  She may have missed it and cursed herself for it.  She turned her attention to Kepler.  His expression remained the same.  There was still no emotion behind those eyes.  They might as well have been glass.  He glanced up at Maxwell, met her gaze, and smiled.  He may have been trying to psych her out.  She was so close to a flush.  And a possible straight with the nine, ten and the joker as a Jack.  It wouldn’t be hard...but it also wouldn’t be hard to lose it.  She could so easily have nothing at all.  She put in two of her remaining chips.

“I see what kind of game we’re playing.  I’ll raise you _one,_ ”  he said mockingly, putting three chips in the middle.  

“We’re just getting started,” Maxwell said to Kepler.  

“Call,” said Jacobi adding three chips in.  

She discarded the two and drew the king of clubs.  A joker, 10, three, nine, and king all of clubs.  A flush. She kept her face impassive.  Jacobi swapped two cards.  Kepler did three.  Another round of betting.  For all his talk, Kepler played conservatively, raising one again.  Maxwell won the hand.  

Things changed in the next round.  Kepler’s smirk remained the same, but he and Jacobi were both down to the single digits in terms of chips.  When it came to Kepler’s second bet he said “to Hell with it, all in.”  

“Are you _sure,_ Colonel?” asked Maxwell, who was nursing a full house.  

“You have to play big,” Kepler said.

Jacobi’s eyes went wide at Kepler’s gambit and immediately folded.  He watched Maxwell and Kepler smirk at each other for a few seconds, looking from one to the other.  She could see him on her periphery, but refused to break eye-contact with Colonel Kepler.

“Full house,” Maxwell said, showing her cards.  

Kepler began to laugh.  He laughed long and hard.  “Nice job, doctor,” he said, regaining composure.  “Five of a kind.”  He revealed four sixes and a joker.  “I’ll be taking this,” he said scooping up the pot.  

The next hand was dealt.  Two fives, hearts and spades, three of spades, two of diamonds, nine of hearts.  At least she had something.  

“So how have y’all been this morning?” asked Kepler as he put in his bet.  He had the same closed-off eyes, the same smirk, the same everything.  

“Uh, fine, sir,” said Jacobi, taken aback.  “You?”

“Well, so far so good.  The diagnostics systems haven’t found anything wrong.  Raise you, by the way.  Everything’s running smoothly,” Kepler replied.  

Jacobi contemplated for a long time before adding his chips to the center.  He considered his chips.  He’d have to go all in to match Kepler.  “Fold,” he said quietly.  

Maxwell swapped the three cards that weren’t fives, got nothing worthwhile.  She may have only had a pair but she wouldn’t let Kepler win by default.  There was a chance he had nothing at all.  

“Are you all ready for the medical drill at 1100?” he asked tapping his cards in the air in the absence of a table.  

“Yes, sir,” said Jacobi.  

“Dr. Maxwell?”

“Mm-hmm,” she replied without really considering his question.  His facial expression hadn’t changed through the entire conversation.  He was impossible to read.  Was the small talk a nervous tick?  Or was he trying to distract her?  

“Then at 1300, I want to get some combat training in.”

“Yes, sir,” Jacobi repeated without enthusiasm.  

“Call,” Maxwell said, putting her chips in.  Meeting Kepler’s bet put her dangerously low.  But she won the hand.  For all the smooth, calm confidence, Kepler only had a pair of twos.  That didn’t help Maxwell in terms of cracking Kepler, it meant that he could retain his composure even with the lowest hand possible after high card.  

Jacobi stayed in the next round and won with a flush. There had been no talk from Kepler, even when it turned out he only had a pair again, it wasn’t a nervous tick, it was a distraction.  Dammit.   

Kepler talked through the next hand and had a full house.  Maxwell won with two pair after that.  

Maxwell tried to keep herself from falling into Kepler’s traps.  Every hand he wore that same smirk.  Sometimes he made small talk, discussed their mission, how lucky it was to find cards in the supplies.  Sometimes he chuckled.  Sometimes he made quiet threats.  “Are you sure you want to do that, Mr. Jacobi?” he asked on their sixth hand. His smirk grew as he asked it, his tone friendly as if he was trying to _help_ Jacobi.

Jacobi fell face first into Kepler’s trap.  “Now that you mention it, no, I don’t,” Jacobi said, “fold.”  Maxwell wasn’t sure which contributed more to Jacobi’s defeat, that he was intimidated, or that he was a sycophant.  She figured it must have been both and rolled her eyes at him.  

“What?” Jacobi asked.  

“Oh, nothing,” Maxwell said.  “You’re still in, Colonel.”

“Of course,” Kepler answered.  

It turned out that if Jacobi had just stayed in, he would have won the hand.  He had three of a kind, Maxwell and Kepler only had pairs.  He seemed sheepish about that, but it didn’t stop him from making the same mistake again.  This time Kepler shot him an expression so dark that it made Maxwell consider folding, too.  It was close to the look Maxwell and Jacobi had dubbed the Blunt Force Trauma Face.  It was an expression he only pulled in the most catastrophic of failures, when things went FUBAR.  

It was impossible to say when Kepler was bluffing regardless of his facial expression.  Regardless of how he bet.  He seemed utterly in control of the game.  Or at the very least he believed he was.  Maxwell would not let him have it that easily.  

“This _sucks,_ ” grumbled Jacobi.  

“Don’t be a sore loser, Jacobi,” laughed Kepler, clearly enjoying himself.  

Maxwell was determined to find Kepler’s tell.  She would find the chink in his seemingly perfect armor.  There had to be _somewhere_ he made a mistake.  Everyone did.  Humans weren’t computers.  Even AIs made mistakes and humans were _far_ more fallible.  

Jacobi was out first.  He wasn’t a bad poker player, but he wasn’t Maxwell, and he certainly wasn’t Kepler.  Playing against Kepler was really what did him in.  He was intimidated, overwhelmed, and his loyalty to Kepler, devout to a near-religiosity, sabotaged him in the end.  Maxwell wouldn’t make that mistake.  

“Poor Jacobi,” Maxwell sighed as Jacobi sourly watched her take his last chips, “like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun.”

“Ha, ha,” said Jacobi sarcastically.  But he glanced in Kepler’s direction as if for approval.  No response from the Colonel.  He was waiting for Maxwell to shuffle the deck and deal again.  

Now that it was just Maxwell and he, his expression changed.  Gone was any kindness.  He met every hand with the same icy glare and occasionally a quiet, self-satisfied chuckle.  Maxwell could see why he was thrown out of the SI’s poker night.  He lived off the fear of the other players and he adapted his behavior to his opponent.  Maxwell wouldn’t let him get away with it.  She knew Kepler wasn’t as scary as he acted.  He could be terrifying when he wanted to be _,_ but he wasn’t some kind of supernatural creature, just a man, even if he wanted you to forget that fact.  

The hands got longer, each player sizing up their opponent for a nearly absurd amount of time.  At first Jacobi watched with interest, but as the hands trudged onward, Maxwell saw fatigue and boredom cross his face.  

“This was a mistake,” Jacobi eventually groaned.  He was floating upside down beside them.  He pushed himself in a slow somersault, probably to alleviate the tedium.  Maxwell had never been more energized by a game in her life.  She was staring down Kepler, who, in turn, was looking at her with a bemused expression, tapping his cards on impatiently.  Jacobi sighed.

“Shush!” Maxwell ordered.  

“Oh, I am _so_ sorry,” Jacobi said sarcastically.  “Should I just leave?”

“If you’re going to whine, yes!” Maxwell told him.

He didn’t leave, however, not at first.  He continued to grumble under his breath every so often.  Both Maxwell and Kepler ignored him.

She used Jacobi to gauge how long the game had been going on.  Eventually he went and got a book, reading as the Colonel debated raising out loud with himself as he had done on several hands before. “Now...should I raise?...hmm...should...I...raise?... Yes...yes, I think I will...but how much?...”

Maxwell knew the game was officially Too Long when Jacobi began to snore.  Even _she_ had lost interest by then.  She was tired of playing but pride wouldn’t let her quit.  Pride and stubbornness.  She had to rub her victory in Colonel Warren James Kepler’s smug face.  She wondered if the only reason _he_ was still playing was the same, to put Dr. Alana Sarah Maxwell in her place.  Meanwhile, Mr. Daniel Kenneth Jacobi snored like a chainsaw.  

A full fifteen minutes of silence was what did it.  Maxwell cracked.  “I’m done,” she said, tossing her cards down.  “You have no tell, you evil bastard. And I’m done with this game.”

“You’re giving up?” laughed Kepler.  “Oh come _on_ , Maxwell, you’re better than that!”

Her hands tightened into fists.  “I’m not giving up!” she snarled.

“It sounds like you just did,” Kepler pointed out with that infuriating smirk.  

“I’m just sick of this game!” Maxwell said.  “And I think you are, too!”

“What makes you say that?” Kepler asked.

“We’ve been playing for _hours_ !  Poor Jacobi fell asleep!  Your shift is literally over and has been for…” she checked her watch.  “ _Six hours?!”_

Jacobi was startled awake by her shout.  He squirmed in the air as if trying to sit upright. “What happened?”

“We’ve been playing for six hours!” Maxwell said shrilly.  

Kepler’s face changed for a moment.  She didn’t know what the expression he flashed meant, exactly, whether he was surprised or frustrated or taken aback.  The look disappeared too quickly for her to be sure, like a flash of heat lightning.

“If you’re not conceding, Dr. Maxwell, what are you doing?” Kepler asked slowly.

“I have another idea,” Maxwell said.  “One that has to go quicker.”

 

***

 

“This is below me,” Kepler said indignantly.

“Are you out then?” Maxwell asked shuffling the deck.  

“No, I am not out,” Kepler answered incredulously.  “I am _never_ out.”

Maxwell dealt the cards, put the remainder in the air between the three of them.  “Oldest goes first, Colonel,” she said, perhaps a little too gleefully.  

“Fine,” Kepler sighed.  “You got any threes, Jacobi?”

“Go fish,” Jacobi answered.


	5. Log UR001-DKJ-005

[Transcript of the log of Daniel K. Jacobi, ballistics R&D, SI-5] 

[Begin Recording]

 

Log of Daniel Jacobi, Special Administrative Officer and First Mate of the USS _Urania_ , Day 5... 

That was...a mistake.  

So I found a deck of cards and some poker chips in the supplies and I figured why not play a friendly game.  It’ll be fun, I thought.  The only three people to get kicked out of SI’s poker night playing together.  What could go wrong?!  We’ll have fun and kill some time!  We’ve got a lot of down time up here, this ship practically flies itself, and there’s only so many times you can watch “Who Mourns for Adonis?” before the charm wears off.  I brought as many DVDs as I could but… “indefinitely” is definitely a _loooooong_ time, we’ve gotta conserve.

How’d the game go?  Welp.  It’s going.  Still.  Still going.  For like four hours.  Four hours _and counting!_ I don’t think they’ve even noticed that I’ve left the room to record this log.  I’m not _bad_ at poker.  I’m _good_ at poker.  But Kepler and Maxwell are like...a billion times better than me...maybe just a million times better than me.  The point is, they’re better than me, especially when we’re not cheating.  

I was surprised Maxwell did so well without cheating, honestly.  I don’t think we’ve ever played an analog game where we weren’t both fudging the rules.  She counts cards when we play _Uno_ for God’s sake. But Kepler challenged her to play fair, so...no cheating.  She’s good at finding tells, but I don’t think Kepler really has any unless he _wants_ you to see them.  

Kepler doesn’t need to cheat.  Of course he doesn’t need to cheat.  He’s Colonel Kepler.  He’s got other ways to win.  Tactics.  Mind games.  He gets in there.  I can see why he got kicked out of SI’s poker night.  I should’ve realized it sooner, honestly.  I’ve worked with the Colonel enough.  

But Maxwell wasn’t taking it.  Just out of sheer unadulterated stubbornness she isn’t backing down.  So they’re still playing.  Right now they’re probably trying to stare each other down…lemme check…

[The sound of a door opening]

[The sound of a door closing]

Yep.  They’re just sitting there staring at each other.  Juuuuust staring.  Kepler’s smiling.  Maxwell’s actively frowning.  This hand has probably been going on for, like, a decade.  

Aside from this game, there’s not much else to report.  I’m working on the designs for a spaceship-safe...well not “safe” but relatively safe...a spaceship- _ready_ bomb.  I’m thinking about going thermobaric.  There’s a lot of oxygen in the air, might as well use it!  I’m going to run the designs by Colonel Kepler as soon as he’s actually paying attention to the real world again.  I’ve also got a high explosive version if we want to play it safe.  Might build both, if Colonel Kepler’s okay with it.  I have more than enough supplies for both and then some.  

I’ll get his attention...once the game is over.  Until then I don’t think either one of them would notice if even if I keeled over and died.

[A sigh]

Once the game is over, I am going to flush those cards out the airlock.

**Author's Note:**

> OHLORDIAMSOWORRIEDABOUTSEASON4!!!!


End file.
